Many enterprises have moved from telephony services using the Public Switched Telephone Network (“PSTN”) (provided by a traditional telephone company) to telephony services using the Internet Protocol (“IP”) (provided by an IP Telephony service provider). Such services are commonly known as Voice over IP (“VoIP”) or IP Telephony. IP Telephony uses an IP network (e.g., the Internet) as a backbone and can thus provide advanced features such as video conferencing, call recording, and call forwarding.
Recently, driven by the growing base of mobile data subscribers, ubiquitous Internet access, and high bandwidth that is now available in both fixed and mobile networks, advanced services accessed via the Internet (known as Over-the-Top (“OTT”) services) have become popular. However, while OTT services threaten traditional telephony offerings, innovative service providers are introducing their own OTT services, and must therefore overcome a number of unique challenges as they deploy and market these new services.